Google Buys Special Effects Company Behind 'Star Trek: Into Darkness'

Google announced last August 26 that it is welcoming Zync Render as it joins the Google Cloud Platform team. Zync Render is the company behind the stunning render effects in 'Star Trek: Into Darkness' and in other films.

The acquired company also announced that pairing with Google Cloud Platform will help them offer an even better service to customers - including more scalability, more host packages and better pricing (including per-minute billing). Google product manager Belwadi Srikanth expressed in his announcement blog that "billing studios aren't trapped into paying for unused capacity when their rendering needs don't fit in perfect hour increments."

Zync added on its website that ever since its inception, it was designed as practical in-house solution by the effects artist, for the effects artist; allowing users to manage and render jobs in the cloud while maintaining the feel of a local render farm. It can actually be very costly for many studios to acquire such independent technology so the terms that will be offered by ZYNC and Google can truly give them benefits.

Its effects rendering technology has already been used to produce "over a dozen" feature films and hundreds of commercials, for a total of 6.5 million core hours of rendering time according to Techcrunch's report. It also mentioned that ZYNC actually is not alone in gearing towards this direction with Google as Atomic Fiction, on the other hand, has also utilized Amazon Web Services platform for their work, also in Star Trek: Into Darkness.

Reuters pointed that "Rendering is the process of generating an image from a 2D or 3D model, or models, using computer programs." It's necessary that cloud capacity is available in completing this process since a single frame with visual effect of cinematic proportions can take 1-2 days to finish.

It is pretty ironic to know that Google and Amazon seem to have been crossing paths these recent days based on what they are working out on. The giant retail superstore lately closed out a deal with Twitch which has actually been rumored for months to be acquired by Google.